Applications and User Services Technical Advisory Group (AUS-TAG) Jorge Vazquez (1), Christopher Jeffery (2), Christopher Finch (1), Mike Chin (1), Kenneth S. Casey (2), Edward Armstrong (1), Tess Brandon (2) Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, 2800 Oak Grove, Pasadena, CA 91109, National Oceanographic Data Center, National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, 1315 East-West Highway, Maryland Presented at GHRSST XI Meeting, lima, Peru, June 21-25, 2010

Outline Implementation of New Technology. Overview of statistics as they relate to users. Example of Users. Example of some product development. Overview of last symposium in Santa Rosa. Implications for Future Symposiums. Overview of Terms of Reference. Agenda for Breakout Session (additions, deletions, etc.) Conclusions.

Implementation of new technology NAIDS Dataminer Dataminer is a web tool for searching and subsetting Level 2 (swath) data. It was developed originally by the French agency IFREMER (an upcoming collaboration is in the works), and modified at PO.DAAC. _ Easily search for Level 2 (swath) data based on a spatial bounding box and time range _ Additionally filter your searches using basic statistical metadata collected from the original data (min, max, etc) _ Get an image preview of your search results before downloading the raw data, with a colorbar for reference _ Download the data in multiple formats (NetCDF3, HDF4, Image, KML) _ The data comes trimmed (subset) based on your space and time search criteria _ Save your search criteria and load it back up when you return (registration required) _ Access data both at PO.DAAC and at remote archives (AMSRE data from PO.DAAC and NODC, meaning the complete historical dataset is searchable across archives) _ Your data request is packaged into a tar file (tar.gz), and we send you an to let you know when it's ready, and an http link to download it from our server _ AMSRE L2P data currently available with future plans including implementation of other L2P data.

Question: How do users get GHRSST Data? Answer: Not just one way.

Type of Users Becoming increasingly diverse as shown by both personal interactions and statistics. Statistics point to a variety of ways users are getting data, with http: and OPeNDAP increasingly more popular.

Random Example of Type of Data Usage and “Diversity”. Near real-time (defense) – Business Development Manager from Signal Systems Corporation, was doing Navy Anti-Submarine Warfare acoustic signal processing work, and aiding NAVAIR with advanced distributed sonar buoy field systems concepts. He requested 1km SST with a high update frequency for the Far East. These would be used to track sonobuoys. instead of GPS by correlating sonobuoy temperature sensor readings with near-real-time SST. Near real-time (weather forecasting) – In collaboration with the Short-Term Prediction and Research Transition Activity a MODIS-AMSR-E composite has been created to support numerical weather forecasting

Random Example of Type of Data Usage and “Diversity” (continued) Historical (Research and Climate) – Tagging of Pacific Predators (TOPP) program needed monthly SST data for Several examples of the type of usage of GHRSST data are listed below: – Tagging of Pacific Predators (TOPP) program needed monthly SST data for – Eric Hackert of the Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center at the University of Maryland used the NCDC Daily OI for assimilating SST into a tropical ocean/coupled model. – Suzanne Dickinson of the University of Washington Applied Physics Laboratory, as part of CLIMODE, is working with a group to try and find the best SST and air temperature to compute decent turbulent fluxes over the Gulf Stream, eventually expanding to global flux calculation. She said "your GHRSST.nc files are very user friendly. They can easily be converted to Matlab format, which is always our end product."

Random Example of Type of Data Usage and “Diversity” (continued) Historical (Research and Climate) – Peter Yaukey of the University of New Orleans was in need of daily sea surface temperature, not smoothed by averaging with adjacent dates, for his research in tropical cyclogenesis. – Dierdre Byrne of the University of Maine wanted to know about GHRSST's accessiblity through OPeNDAP (before it actually was accessible through OPeNDAP again). Husband was responding to a NASA RFP which specifically mentioned GHRSST products. Was pointed and introduced to the GMPE and HR-DDS. – Katrien Quisthoudt of Vrije Universiteit in Brussel, Belgium used the Daily OI (AVHRR oly) for research on mangroves – Nadya Vinogradova of Atmospheric and Environmental Research, Inc. needed L2P SST for the last decade (MW or infrared) as part of the ECCO-GODAE modeling and assimilation experiment. – Sunanda, a research fellow at the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) in Hyderabad, India, was working on a thesis entitled "merging multiplatform SST." He wants to generate a product that could be a contribution to GHRSST from India. He's working with AVHRR and MODIS data, as well as TMI and in-situ data. Was pointed to the GDS.

Example products (historical) NASA MEaSURES (PI Mike Chin) Fronts (Ed Armstrong) FIGURE 3: MEaSURES (MUR) analysis for November 2008

Has GHRSST improved on Benjamin Franklin’s model of the Gulf Stream 11

Eg: MUR analysis for 2009

Eg: Why resolution matters and how GHRSST data is helping? Example from recent El Nino. Work by Tony Lee and colleagues at JPL

Increasing Intensity of El Nino in the central-equatorial Pacific (CP) (Lee & McPhaden 2010, GRL) (El Nino Modoki) Intensity of El Nino in the central-equatorial Pacific (Nino4), from Reynolds L4 GHRSST) CP-El Nino events have occurred more frequently in recent decades (Kao & Yu 2009, Kug et al. 2009). These events may occur more frequently under projected global warming scenarios (Yeh et al. 2009). CP- and EP-El Nino events have different climate impacts (Weng et al. 2009, Kim et al. 2009). El Nino intensity in the CP region has nearly doubled in the past three decades, causing an apparent increase of Pacific warm-pool SST in the nino4 region; important implications to climate.

SSTA anomaly & 500-hPa geopotential height anomaly 5 std. dev. 1 std. dev. Record warming in the South Pacific & western Antarctica associated with the El Nino (Lee et al. 2010, GRL) Record mixed-layer warming in South- central Pacific (SCP) & W. Antarctica during austral spring-summer. Associated with an extreme & persistent anticyclone. Related wind changes caused the oceanic warming: comparable roles of heat flux & ocean dynamics. Southern Annular Mode did not play a major role. The El Nino appeared to have fueled the South Pacific warming. Extreme events like this may adversely affect the Antarctic environment, esp. if they become more frequent & intense in the future associated with Central- Pacific El Nino (previous slide).

Record austral-summer warming in the Bellingshausen Sea and near the Wilkins Ice Shelf inferred from GHRSST (Lee et al. 2010)

Terms of Reference The Applications and User Services Technical Advisory Group (AUS-TAG) of the Group for High Resolution Sea Surface Temperature (GHRSST) was formed at the 10th meeting of the GHRSST Science Team (GHRSST-ST) in Santa Rosa California, June 1-5, The GHRSST-ST voted to form the group as a result of the need to consolidate and facilitate better communications for user’s and application’s support within the GHRSST science and user community. RESPONSIBILITIES Manage all aspects of the GHRSST User Manual. – This includes overseeing all new versions, providing periodic reviews, as deemed necessary by the science team, and maintaining the latest version to the user community Maintain and develop methods for data discovery within the GHRSST R/GTS. – This includes making recommendations to the science team on new technologies that could improve data access and usability. Will also work closely with the data management technical advisory group in the implementation of these new technologies.

Terms of Reference The Applications and User Services Technical Advisory Group (AUS-TAG) of the Group for High Resolution Sea Surface Temperature (GHRSST) was formed at the 10th meeting of the GHRSST Science Team (GHRSST-ST) in Santa Rosa California, June 1-5, The GHRSST-ST voted to form the group as a result of the need to consolidate and facilitate better communications for user’s and application’s support within the GHRSST science and user community. MEMBERSHIP Chair and Vice-Chair of the AUS-TAG shall be appointed by the GHRSST-ST. Term of chairmanship is at the discretion of the GHRSST-ST and will be reviewed periodically by the GHRSST-ST and science chair. Membership of the AUS-TAG shall be done on volunteer basis, appointed by the chair and co-chair, or by the GHRSST-ST. There will be no limits on the term of membership

Santa Rosa Symposium Summary Eric Lindstrom voiced strong praise for the symposium. Several highlights from the symposium are listed below. Diversification of GHRSST users Operational ‘’Heavies’’ still here. These include organizations such as the UK Met Office and NAVOCEANO. Ocean Scientists need high resolution for use in coastal zones Emerging focus on using GHRSST data historically. Reanalysis efforts critical for increasing science usage.

Report from first GHRSST User’s Symposium in Santa Rosa Santa Rosa symposium (Very successful!) Future Symposiums. Perhaps some of these questions already answered by Lima Meeting. What are the next steps? Symposiums continue at every GHRSST science team meeting? Symposium on separate dates and/or locations from the Science Team Meeting? Longer meeting? Shorter Meeting? More Posters? Should we target specific International Partners. Example GHRSST XI in South America! Who should lead future symposiums (Users, etc.). Eg: GHRSST XI symposium in Lima, Peru well supported by users from South America.

Eg: User question I just received? Again information management Current SST data related to Deep Horizon Oil Spill Hello and good morning, I am seeking SST shapefiles for the Gulf of Mexico as it relates the Oil Spill. I am a GIS Specialist with The Resource Group at Houma Incident Command Post at BP, Schreiver, LA. We had a request by USCG and military personnel to offer sea surface temperatures daily on our viewer in relationship to other assets being managed, both public and private. It would be of great help to have this information available. Much of info on your FTP is dated to You can contact me at or respond at the address above. Thanks Wayne McCray

Conclusion: GHRSST is quickly becoming an exercise in not only data management, but also information management. How we merge these is a central question for the applications and user’s services Technical Advisory Group. – We need to be increasingly thinking outside the box in implementation of technologies. But this means staying focused on the goal: Providing a stable and reliable near real time capability for applications How do we manage data sets (L4) that don’t reside at the GDAC? How do we point them? Problem (I see) here is not data management or virtual data sets. Virtual information is much harder. With increasing data streams, how do we instantly notify users of problem (RSS) Allowing quick and efficient access to large amounts of data for historical and science (climate!) usage.

Agenda for Breakout Session  Overview of Current Users by type: operational (applications) versus research. This can be a somewhat artificial boundary, but we need to start somewhere. All Review of examples of usage of GHRSST data by users: again operational versus research. All Lessons learned from Users Symposium: Santa Rosa and Lima Jorge Overview of current Users Manual (GDSV2.0) and Terms of Reference for AUS-TAG: Christopher Jeffery Based on discussions from 1-3 what are the issues (from a user perspective) to working with the data. Subsetting? Data Aggregation? All Requirements document: Can we come up with a requirement document that can be handed over to the DAS-TAG for implementation based on user needs, etc.